Extra Latitude

In Honor's Hand I am granting the players a little extra latitude when it comes to handling botches or unbelievable successes.

In a tabletop game the storyteller (or game master) normally decides on the effect of a botch or unbelievable successes on the spot, telling the player just how bad (or good) it's going to be. But in a PBEM if a player is writing a post and botches a roll they may find it quite difficult to finish writing the post because they don't know what happened. Consider the following example:

Joe (a character) decides to shoot a vampire, the player makes a roll for the shot and it botches. In a tabletop the game the storyteller decides what happened, some possible outcomes are:

• The gun jammed, gun must now be un-jammed.

• The character accidentally drops the gun.
• It was a dead round (primer but no powder) the barrel must now be cleared - but the character might not realise this as the shot did go "bang".
• The gun exploded in the characters hand.
• The character accidentally shoots themselves.

Each of these outcomes effects the players post: "In his haste to draw the pistol [32] Joe snags it on his coat and drops it" or "Joe points the gun in the direction of the vampire [32] but as he fires the barrel explodes badly burning is hand. [33]**"

So to avoid the "err... what now?" question I am letting the players decide the outcome of a botch (or unbelievable success) and write whatever's appropriate in the post.

If a player abuses this privilege I will let them know my feelings pretty quickly, OOC of course. If they continue to abuse the privilege I might expel them from the game. Consider yourself warned.

 

** The second roll is a soak roll to see how much damage the character takes.